Category talk:Candidates for deletion/Archive6
This is an archive – please don't edit. Highlight text beyond 80 columns Deletion description: "No point keeping redirect for original (non-standard) title" While I agree strongly with the page rename, I disagree even more strongly with deleting the old page title. The entire reason moving a page automatically generates these redirects is to prevent link rot. Link rot is one of the worst problems with poorly-maintained sites on the internet. Ever do a google search, find a summary that looks like it is exactly what you need, but you go to the page and get a "sorry, we have rearranged our server, and we can't find the page you are looking for?" How frustrating! All they would need to do is have their server point you to the new page, or put a placeholder page in with a link, or any number of simple things that would allow you to access the content you want. Equally frustrating is when you are reading a thread on a forum or mailing list, find what looks like a great link, but the same thing occurs. For this reason, unless we have a very good reason, I think we should keep redirect pages. The main exception I could see for this would be when we re-name a "proposed new tip" page, but even that could be dangerous. Think this page is too obscure to already be linked externally? Think again: http://groups.google.com/group/vim_use/browse_thread/thread/afcd38c3f6baaa86/06eef2b75542cffe I strongly recommend keeping this redirect, and more like it in the future. --Fritzophrenic 19:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC) :On a related note, I view the merging of tips to be analagous to a rename. For the same reasons as above, I believe we should simply replace the content of merged tips with a redirect to the new tip, rather than deleting them outright. I would be more open to exceptions to this rule, but I think the general procedure needs to be to keep as many urls accessible as possible. I think it will cost us next to nothing, and the benefits are potentially very great. This is especially true for imported tips. If you remember reading something great in an old tip, and even remember the tip number, you could come here to read it. You would see a "this tip has been removed" message, and rather than going to the new tip with the same (or better) content, you would instead access the old tip on vim.org, which is probably in even worse shape than the tip was when it was merged. If we instead keep the old tip title as a redirect, then a user will immediately be able to find the content they are looking for. --Fritzophrenic 20:07, 28 August 2008 (UTC) ::To clarify, readers will only see a brutal "this tip has been removed" if they go to a VimTipNumber URL (for example, VimTip77). As you have observed, these days I'm trying to provide more helpful information when tips are deleted. For example, VimTip5 says "merged to to tip 1". I thought that was more helpful, although it does require the user having to click the link. If VimTip5 was just a redirect to tip 1, you would have the very confusing situation that going to the VimTip5 URL would give you tip 1''' (most people would regard that as a bug). Also, there would be no link to the original tip for someone wanting to mine the history. --JohnBeckett 01:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC) OK! But there might be a misunderstanding. I did '''not propose deleting "Highlight text beyond 80 columns". In fact, I did what you suggested, and Highlight text beyond 80 columns is a redirect to Highlight long lines (the current title of tip 810). "Highlighting Text Beyond 80 Columns" was the original name of tip 810 which was one of the 578 tips renamed in a bulk process in October 2007. It's taking a long time, but I'm still operating on the principle that the import of the original tips needs to be completed. The problem is that lots of those tips had broken titles and misguided/obsolete advice (since they could not be edited), and it didn't make much sense to preserve the history on a new site (the mess makes it hard to fix stuff). Re the current issue: Do you have time to fix it? As far as I'm concerned, the simplest would be for you to just edit Highlighting Text Beyond 80 Columns so it redirects to 810 (if you don't think that the original title should be removed). I'll never be offended by you reversing one of my edits. If no time, confirm you do want the original title, and I'll fix it. I'll certainly think twice in the future, and I see the sense in what you've said and will start keeping old titles (I'm wondering about very old titles like the one in question, which only existed from July to October 2007). --JohnBeckett 01:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC) Other redirects I think should be deleted What about VimTip979 which originally (July 2007) had title *Map search to space bar increased and was renamed (September 2007) to ::Okay, this one can go. --Fritzophrenic 03:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC) *Map search key to space bar ::This one we should probably keep; not because I think anyone actually bookmarked or linked it, but because we should get into the good habit of keeping more redirects than we get rid of. --Fritzophrenic 03:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC) and I've just renamed it (while cleaning June new tips) to *Short mappings for common tasks ::Probably a good place for it. --Fritzophrenic 03:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC) As per discussion on keeping old titles, I'm happy to keep "Map search key to space bar" forever. However, is there a reason to keep the old and broken titles that only existed from July to December 2007? I'm inclined to delete the original (broken) titles, like "Map search to space bar increased" in this case. --JohnBeckett 10:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC) Broken redirects that I would like to delete includes the following which I think should be deleted. Each is a redirect to a deleted/merged tip. Each is in the list of 578 tips renamed in October 2007. *Centura swap with upper/lower line behavier *Cut/Copy(All)/Paste with Ctrl-X/C(A)/V *Quickly go to next buffer. *Some mappings for using cscope with vim. *Standard editing shotcuts *Visual Select And Search The above broken redirects need to be cleaned up and I think the best way forward is to simply delete them. If I had time, I would check the above list of 578 renamed tips and think about deleting pretty well all of the old redirects (which only existed from July to October 2007). --JohnBeckett 04:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC) ---- I would say it is safe to delete all the redirects from the mass rename project, although I would cosider exceptions for titles that aren't too bad. I figured you had already done that as part of the rename project. I also would not be opposed to deleting redirects for recently added tips with obvious misspellings, etc. The rest we should probably keep, but it looks like you agree with me there. --Fritzophrenic 03:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC) ---- I'm okay with deleting all the candidates for deletion in the category as of the time in my signature here. Make sure to put a link to new tips in the deleted pages (or change them to a redirect...I may try some of that this weekend, but realistically probably won't) --Fritzophrenic 03:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)